Week of 6/29

This week we learned a lot about strategies for learning. This was a very useful unit for me because it helped more to more fully understand how I can help my future students to learn and understand more.
This week we each had the opportunity to teach a strategy to the class in small groups. In my group we talked about how we need to help to redefine the definition of failure for our students and help them to see any little success or progress as success. We also talked about how we need to see small realistic goals that our students can meet regularly and see their success. We also talked about how we need to help students to see any little progress or failure as a pathway to success. For this part we used the quote from Thomas Edison that said when developing the light bulb "I haven't failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that don't work." We need to help our students to see failure like Thomas Edison saw it and be proud of every little success that we do have. I also learned a lot from the other presentations that taught me about a lot of acronym strategies to help students to be more successful in class.
This week I also learned a lot about self-monitoring and how it can positively affect student's performances. In class we had a note card that we marked on when we participated such as making a comment, asking a question or clarifying something and then we also marked when we affirmed what someone said such as a smile, a nod or even a high five or fist bump. This had a very interesting affect on my small group discussion and the whole group discussions. I found that during the small group discussion I initially was very annoyed with having to mark when I did certain things but after I had gotten used to it then I found that I wanted to participate more so that I could get a tally mark. I found that our group discussions became much more involved and that we covered a lot more material then we normally would have but that our discussions were more surface level.
These activities that we had in class along with the discussions that we had helped me to more fully understand self-monitoring along with helping students to become more successful through strategies.